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CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Institute of Political Studies

Ba. Charles Sanjoh

Municipal Resilience in the Face of Chronic Violence: The Case of Johannesburg

Masters Thesis

Prague 2017

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Author: Ba. Charles Sanjoh

Supervisor: PhDr. Vit Stritecky M.Phil., PhD.

Opposing Supervisor:

Academic Year: 2016/2017

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3 Bibliographic Note.

Sanjoh, Charles. Municipal Resilience in the face of Chronic Violence: The Case of

Johannesburg. 63 p. Masters Thesis. Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of International Relations. Supervisor, Prof. Vit. Stritecky. PhDr.

Abstract.

Considering present day violence and insecurity in our city spaces, it is important not only to embark on preventive measures, but also to learn how to cope with them. Security threats have always been and will continue to plague our cities and municipalities. It would be an illusion to talk of eliminating violence, consequently, resilience to these violence emerges as a gate way to move on with our daily activities without fear and with greeter hope for a better future.

Abstrakt.

S přihlédnutím k současnému násilí a nejistotě v našich městských prostorech je důležité nejen zabývat se preventivními opatřeními, ale také naučit se s nimi vyrovnat. Bezpečnostní hrozby byly vždy a budou nadále znepokojovat naše města a obce. Bylo by to iluze mluvit o odstranění násilí, následkem toho, odolnost vůči tomuto násilí se objevuje jako brána, jak pokračovat v každodenních činnostech bez strachu a s větší nadějí na lepší budoucnost.

Keywords.

Resilience, Security Threats, Municipal, Community, Adaptation, Violence.

Klíčová slova.

Odolnost, bezpečnostní hrozby, komunita, komunita, přizpůsobení, násilí.

Range of thesis. 63 pages

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4 Declaration of Authorship.

I hereby declare that I compiled this thesis independently using only the listed resources and literature.

I hereby declare that all the sources and literature used have been properly cited.

Furthermore, I declare that this thesis has not been used to obtain a different or the same degree.

Prague 2017. Charles Sanjoh.

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5 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my family; my wife and kids whose sacrifice to this endeavor cannot be measured. Their moral support was my greatest motivating factor to this success. Special thanks also goes to my Prof. and Coordinator, PhD. Vit Stritecky who gave me a push forward despite all difficulties. I would definitely not forget all my lecturers of this program, who were so close to me, feed me with the necessary knowledge and instilled some strategic thinking in me. Men and women at the International Office of Charles University, you are not left out, thank you all for your incessant availability to my requests.

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Abbreviations

MR Municipal Resilience CR Community Resilience R2P Responsibility to Protect

UNISDR United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction CPC Citizen Power Council

SES Socio Economic Status

JMPD Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department SAPS South African Police Service

CPFs Community Policing Forums Joburg Johannesburg

CJP Central Johannesburg Partnership JCSP Johannesburg City Safety Program SVC Stabilizing Vulnerable Community CAR Central African Republic

IOM International Organization for Migration ICT Information and Communications Technology

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1. INTRODUCTION

Violence diminishes well-being, and public insecurity erodes the rule of law, undermining the quality of democratic principles and institutions. The word Resilience is derived from the Latin word Resalire, meaning to bounce back. The Concept of Resilience is drawn from a wide range of disciplines, physics, ecology and psychology. During the early 1980s, it was associated to the concept of being able to absorb and recover from hazardous situations. There is no specific definition of the word resilience as it is defined by each author with regard to the context in which it is applied. Ecologically, (Klein et al 2003, p. 5, 35-45), defines resilience as the ability of a system that has undergone stress to recover and return to its original state; that is, the amount of disturbance a system can absorb and still remain within the same state or domain of attraction and the degree to which the system is capable of re-organizing itself.

From the community point of view,( Gunderson, 2005), referred to it as the return or recovery time of a social-ecological system, determined by (1) that system's capacity for renewal in a dynamic environment and (2) people's ability to learn and change (which, in turn, is partially determined by the institutional context for knowledge sharing, learning, and management, and partially by the social capital among people). From the economic standpoint, (Rose, 2007), concluded that, it is the speed at which an entity or system recovers from a severe shock to achieve a desired state, the ability of an entity or system to maintain function (e.g., continue producing) when shocked, and the ability to deal with crises.

Increasingly one finds it in political science, business administration, ecology, sociology, history, disaster planning, urban planning, and international development. (Luthar 1993, Rutter 1995, and Masten 1994) The shared use of the term does not, however, imply unified concepts of resilience nor the theories in which it is embedded. Different uses generate different methods, sometimes different approaches. The term has a range of meanings, from the basic “bouncing back” from adversity, to more complex understandings of adaptive evolution in the face of continual change.

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9 From a security perspective, these ideas imply the limits of our ability to either predict or control the forces of insecurity and to address their roots causes, because we now face a world of

“contradictions, ambiguities and uncertainties”

Thus, while recent security paradigms such as Human Security and Responsibility to Protect (R2P) have emphasized the need for prevention and protection, the focus on global complexity expresses the limits of these approaches.

The main purpose of my thesis is to point out how important it is for policy makers, academic think tanks as well as communities or municipalities to find a way out in dealing with the fact that, despite the continuous violence, we still have to carry on with our daily activities without any fear of the unknown. How could we positively fight against the continuous fear that we have despite the efforts in the reduction of violence in our cities.

This thesis is also meant to give us some understanding, through our case study of Johannesburg, the nature of the nature of security threats not only in the Sub Saharan Africa, but also in most capital and major cities in the continent. It also brings out a form of resilience uncommon to the western societies which could in some way serve as a springboard for future policy makers.

For the purpose of this Thesis, Municipal Resilience can be defined as the individual and community capacities to resist against the perpetrators of violence through strategies that help them establish relatively autonomous control over activities, spaces, socio-economic forces and conditions that comprise their daily lives. The capability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back rapidly through survival, adaptability, development, and evolution in the face of turbulent change. Thus, it could be considered as a demonstrated capacity of the community, to withstand and respond positively to adversity, a positive adaptation to change. In our contemporary world, many forms of violence manifest themselves in the cities and urban spaces.

They include, terrorism, Illegal trafficking, Rape, Homicide, Crimes and looting and Xenophobic violence. Municipal authorities and the states are doing a lot to prevent crimes, but the scale at which they still occur raise a call for concern. Bombings in public spaces has recently become a common the order of the day.

One can never prevent or protect against all threats. The notion of resilience has emerged as a powerful new antidote to security threats. The use of resilience in response to vulnerability

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10 initially emerged from disaster response and mitigation efforts, aimed at addressing catastrophes in the face of environment’s uncontrollable forces. Within the framework of the United Nations, building “resilient communities” became the basis of the 2005 Framework for Action for disaster risk reduction (UNISDR 2005) and the Making Cities Resilient campaign (UNISDR 2013).

Some critiques overlook the power of resilience, like human security before it, as a worldview to inform intervention. Unlike human security, which seeks to ameliorate the sociopolitical causes of insecurity, resilience views instability and crisis as endemic and unstoppable. Security is thus addressed not by changing the environment, but by helping people to withstand shocks, by building their resilience. It is in this respect that some authors (David Chandler, 2012) talks about developing the self-securing agency of vulnerable populations.

Given that resilience can have many meanings across the natural and social sciences, even the narrower term of “community resilience” can have multiple meanings within the social sciences, and several recent reviews sought to identify a concept of community resilience that could be useful across disciplines. (Norris et al. 2008, Chandler et al. 2010). Community resilience, collective efficacy and social capital, offer a conceptual model as applied to shocks and adversity posed by high levels of crime and violence, be it persistent or sudden. (Franken Berger et al).

This thesis will be divided into four main parts: the first part of my thesis, will consist of the theoretical analysis of the concept of Municipal Resilience ( MR ), otherwise referred to as Community Resilience ( CR ), through some of its categories and patterns relevant for resilience building in the community. The second part which is part of the core of the work, will analyze the major enabling factors for resilience building in our municipalities. In the third section, which will involve our empirical case of Johannesburg, the enabling factors of resilience will be analyze within the framework of the city of Johannesburg as well as their challenges. Finally, the last section will conclude on the topic by giving a brief summary of the above analysis and a way to move forward.

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2.Theoretical Categories And Patterns Of Resilience.

In categorizing and measuring resilience, it is important to move beyond the superficial hypothesis that all forms of adaptation are equivalent in terms of system-reinforcing dynamics.

What also needs to be assessed is the outcomes associated with certain patterns of adaptation.

Owing to the defects in most standard measurements, figuring out the answers to such questions will require a more nuanced way of conceptualizing resilience that does not rely purely on quantitative metrics of violence, and that does not assume that reduced violence rates implies resilience, or a return to normalcy. For example, violence may go down when armed actors have been able to develop greater control over a given space or territory, with such outcomes often produced by extortion, threats, or special deals with the state or the community that do not get to the root source of violence.

Being resilient is associated with contentment, and the things that makes you happy in life are mostly the things that make you to become more resilient. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Being resilient is not a personality trait, but a more and continuous learning process. The individual and community should not perceived moments of crisis as an unsolvable situation, but rather as a learning experience and a chance for personal development and collective growth.

In seeking measures or evidence of urban resilience, it is important to identify more than just those strategies that seem to provide a temporary return to normalcy. What is also important is to assess which adapting or coping strategies will create a sense of security that scales over time and space, and that is most likely to be sustainable or self-reinforcing. Some adaptations that seem to indicate progress or pushback against the forces of violence can in the long, be of disadvantage to some citizens while it helps others.(Cities have different dynamics). At the level of the city, such adaptations can be seen in the form of displacement coming from harassment from private police.

This raises the importance of thinking about trade-offs among forms and patterns of resilience, not just among different residents in the same city but also in terms of immediate versus long-

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12 term gains in livelihood. Worse still, resilience could even be achieved through the takeover of security and justice functions by a criminal syndicate, an adaptation that could reduce rates of violence but would plague into the capacity of the state to guarantee security and establish sociopolitical order.

Resilience may be neither “progressive” nor inherently positive (Davis 2005), at least if the main point of departure for identifying it is merely coping or adaptation. Municipal and at times citizen responses to violence can strengthen the forces and conditions responsible for violence, leading to setbacks. Likewise, some strategies of resilience can perpetuate the same framework of power or activity that led to violence in the first place, thus preventing new corridors in the struggle against of chronic violence. In such instances of resilience, it is clear that a return to normality would not in fact be the desired state.

Consequently, in order to enhance its conceptual use as a foundation for constructive policymaking, resilience as a concept must be disaggregated into more precise, finely tuned categories.

I therefore suggest the importance of distinguishing between positive, negative, and equilibrium resilience, depending on whether coping or adaptation strategies will strengthen, weaken, or stabilize the existing forces and conditions of violence.

2.1 Positive vs. Negative vs. Equilibrium Resilience.

The positive form is where the collective social, political and economic capacities of the urban institutions inter-operate and violence is tangibly reduced, that is a relative tranquility in places recently or occasionally affected by violence; while negative resilience is where capacities of the institutions are marginalized, resulting in greater urban violence and insecurity. An equilibrium resilience is considered a situation is where only certain institution are strengthened (key institutions), leading to a state of stability of violence or better still when minor fluctuations of violence feature.

Probably the most dramatic form of resilience is that evidenced by intensive and proactive efforts on the part of communities to actively take control of their daily situation in ways that could be considered a form of resistance to the power and influence of armed actors. This, in fact, is a way of moving from a situation of equilibrium to positive resilience. It is important to be aware of the fact that, no community is ever free from all constraints, and that, in situations

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13 of violence, armed actors are usually powerful and threatening enough that they cannot be completely relegated or ignored let alone controlled nor eliminated.

Thus, in order to keep violence and armed actors at bay, or to protect themselves from total capture and control by such forces, residents may need to create either horizontal relationships among themselves, fortified relations among social, political, spatial, and economic stakeholders in a given spatially or vertical relationships with forces residing outside the physical confines of the community. In many instances, community residents may have to manage both sets of relationships at the same time, precisely because these relationships allow them the political, social, spatial and economic resources that will enable them to protect and strengthen their own relative autonomy vis-à-vis armed actors. (Davis 2009, p. 221-245).

With such a definition at hand, it would be necessary to identify the sets of conditions and practices that enhance an individual or a community’s capacity to act independently of armed actors, specifying the types of horizontal and vertical relationships that have been used to sustain this relative autonomy. Considering the fact that, violence and responses to it are situated in physical space, I would also consider the spatial correlates of resilience, seeking to determine whether and how physical conditions in a neighborhood will affect the nature, degrees, and likelihood of resilience.

Such a task will lead us to consider whether future policy actions in the fields of crime prevention, security reform, or violence reduction will require an understanding of the spatial foundations of resilience. To the extent that violence in a particular city may be related to spatial patterns, including the creation of underserviced or spatially excluded communities in which social, political, and economic marginality can pave the way to chronic violence, we should also consider that urban spatial policies and practices may affect capacities for resilience.

By designing policy interventions around knowledge of how and in what ways people have mobilized to successfully confront problems of chronic violence, policymakers will encourage and reinforce existent forces and conditions of urban resilience while also investing in city- building strategies and social relationships that will make such patterns more self-sustainable.

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14 2.2 Horizontal vs. Vertical Forms of Resilience

It is important to note that resilience is also about forging connections with the state and within the community space. Horizontal form of resilience deals with the relationship among community members, that is, how individuals and groups of stakeholders interact and how they perceive a common threat. Vertical resilience is the relationship with forces residing outside the confines of the community. This may include state authorities, armed actors, international actors and institutions. The two are often forged together, especially where there is participatory budgeting initiatives as a result of the much needed financing from the city budget.

Mexico city and Medellin in Colombia are good examples. In some municipalities, it is difficult for the two to merge. It is also difficult for informal settlements to build vertical relations with the state as the latter will be unwilling to legally recognize these areas. This is the case with Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya and Johannesburg (South Africa) especially within the neighborhoods of Soweto, Alexandra, Diepsloot, Jeppestown and Hillbrow. Vertical ties are more common in areas of economic potential and horizontal ties are stronger in areas that are most detached from the state. Horizontal relationships in informal settlements develop from common visions for what their community can become as well as common identities. However, a strong vertical and horizontal ties, reduce the rate of crimes and violence and defines a good relationship between the state and the community, even though these relationships are somewhat restrictive given the centralization of the state and its extension into the daily lives of most communities, blurring the boundary between public and private spheres, potentially infringing on civil liberties.

In some municipalities where there are no participatory budgeting, councils are established with the aim to enhance citizen participation and accountability with respect to public authorities. An example is the Citizen Power Council of Managua(Nicaragua). In parts of the city where the opposition is in charge, however, there is often a refusal to recognize or cooperate with the CPC on the grounds that it is an illegitimate actor.

This shows that fostering vertical ties to the state is difficult in cities that are politically polarized, which in turn contributes to horizontal fissures between communities that are seen as

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15 tied to different political actors. Kigali(Rwanda) is an example of a city with very strong horizontal and vertical ties.

2.3 The Central and Peripheral Spaces of Resilience

The central space is where the municipal authorities are always present with mixed land uses characterized by multiple economic functions and opportunities, with strong authority presence.

The peripheral space on the contrary, is where the presence of the authorities is often limited and selective. Most often it is composed of new settlers with precarious land tenure and limited employment opportunities.

The central spaces of resilience are those where the commercial sector is present and where connections to the state are the strongest. The peripheral spaces, which most often include the squatter settlements, are where informality in housing and economic production is the most predominant and connections with the state are the most fragile. As a result, resilience in these areas becomes negative and proactive, as the state will intervene only after serious crimes have been committed. It is not only the physical distance that matters, but also the state involvement within them. Central and peripheral spaces often mapping differences between spaces where the state is almost always present and spaces where its presence has been selective, if not absent for many years.

Within cities there are variations in resilience across space, with differences between central and peripheral spaces often mapping differences between spaces where the state is almost always present and spaces where its presence has been selective, if not absent for many years. It is important to note that when defining central versus peripheral places that we are not only referring to location within the city center or on its outskirts, though this is sometimes the case.

Very often what is termed the periphery is actually physically located in the city but symbolically distant from the power relations that structure it. Thus, squatter settlements can be located far into the physical periphery, on the hillsides overlooking the city, or even entangled in the city itself. Because location in the city cannot always distinguish central versus peripheral spaces of resilience, a better marker would be their relationship to the state.

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16 The central spaces of resilience are those where the commercial sector is present and where connections to the state are the strongest. The peripheral spaces, which most often include the squatter settlements, are where informality in housing and economic production is the most prevalent and connections with the state are the most fragile. (Diepsloot and Hillbrow in Johannesburg). What is so interesting about the examples of resilience in peripheral spaces is that these communities all have the potential to forge new connections with the state in layered and complex ways.

São Paulo, Medellin, and Johannesburg are all examples of squatter settlements being spaces of concentrated insecurity. The root of much of this insecurity stems from their poverty, and armed actors have taken advantage of the absence of the state from many of these spaces to control informal economies and sometimes impose their own social order. But whereas resilience is evident in Medellin in that the community has organized subtle and overt means to challenge armed actors’ control over territory, resilience in São Paulo is much less proactive, much more a managed equilibrium between maintaining autonomy from criminal actors without resisting their authority.

Resilience in São Paulo(Brasil) is more of a standoff between the state and the criminals that control the squatter settlements with the community caught in between. It is not that they support the drug traffickers who hold sway over the spaces where they live, but the residents have such distrust for the police that they are reluctant to call upon the state to remove the parallel powers.

The absence of the state in such spaces has led these communities to develop potential connections with the municipal as well as the state authorities leading to insecurity.

The origin of much of this insecurity stems from their poverty, and armed actors have taken advantage of the absence of the state to control informal economies and sometimes impose their own social order.

Common characteristics of center city spaces include; Multiple economic functions and opportunities, pedestrian activity and mobility, strong state presence, police-community cooperation: While common characteristics of urban periphery are; newly established, precarious land tenure, limited employment opportunities, relative state absence and police-community rupture.

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17 2.4 Proactive and Reactive Forms of Resilience

Resilience initiated to lay down principles against crimes and violence expected to occur in the future, is what is referred to as Proactive Resilience, while resilience to adapt and respond to crimes and violence that has already occurred, is known as Reactive Resilience. Cities that fall in the latter spectrum is largely because of their individual history of urbanization, insecurity and demographic divisions, even though it may differ according to their histories and contexts. What is more interesting in this context, is the proactive efforts that community organizations have made to confront the everyday insecurity in their neighborhoods, such as human rights forums and support groups led by former actors in armed conflicts who know best how to extricate current members from the cycle of violence.

Community solidarity also play an important role in enhancing the effectiveness of proactive resilience on crimes and violence. (Nina Marie Lister). Having a unifying goal, vision, or hope greatly increases the horizontal ties that exist within a community, and networks of people are essential to creating proactive resilience with significant scope, scale and longevity.

However, with new threats, and faced with the knowledge that the root sources of violence were much more difficult to eliminate, citizens learned that it was important to organize proactively in the fight against perpetrators of violence and crimes. As a result of this learning process , based on the knowledge that both states and violent actors may come and go, despite the best of intentions they may have, that ultimately motivated citizens to rely on each other and to seek to control their own community responses to violence.

Resilience can be framed in a number of different ways. One is the temporal context for resilience. The common spectrum that emerges is one that includes cities where resilience is proactive, that is, initiated to lay a foundation against crime and violence expected in the future;

to cities where resilience is reactive, that is, adaptations seems to be the response to crime and violence that has already occurred.

Where cities fall in this spectrum is largely based in their individual history of urbanization, insecurity and demographic divisions. Managua and Kigali are considered as cities that exhibit

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18 strong proactive resilience. The resilience in these cities is a tool used to keep future violence at bay, resulting in a much lower rate of violence. This type of resilience may also differ following the historical background and the context of each city and the sense of community solidarities that allow residents to push back against the actors of violence.( CPC of Managua).

Resilience in a city like Kigali has become strongly proactive given the country’s extreme history of violence and the legacies of genocide. Consequently, the state has imposed a strong

“never again” mentality that has served as the impetus for the very proactive resilience seen in present day Kigali. The powerful community solidarities are demonstrated by the importance of community-based work, which bridges state decision and neighborhood actions.

These involve regular meetings, local leadership, improved services, even those provided informally, and other instances of proactive resilience.( Umuganda, Community–based work in Kigali) The state’s involvement in and relationship with neighborhoods is essential to the sustainability of these mechanisms, but local communities are also resilient towards coercive state practices, such as forced evictions. The idea of fluid solidarities is also important to proactive resilience.

Kigali illustrates this aspect as intra-communal bonds were disrupted by the migration from rural Rwanda to the capital. The state also considers perpetrators of violence to be political enemies.

In the absence of formal communal policing but proactive against rising reports of unrest, the state was able to take advantage of this state of flux to force citizens to organize their own police forces. Although these local defense forces were disbanded after they stirred up anger and dissatisfaction due to regular abuse of authority, they were the first of several steps towards the building of a national police force.

The latter project was conceived explicitly to restore a high degree of vibrancy to center city districts that decades before the spikes in violence had been one of the most highly visited area of the city. Some locations in the city have experienced a renaissance of popularity as well as restored perceptions of security as evidenced by the increasing number of visitors both day and night.

In contrast, the gains have been less durable in the more peripheral and residential areas, perhaps because of the circumstances under which locals called upon the city government to renovate a square that had long been recognized as the territory of a band. Policies were justified more as an effort to change the prior history and character of the area than to return it to a state of

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19 normalcy. In some cities, residents took the initiative to secure their building with gates and identification-only access to the compound, which in some ways was proactive, but in other ways was reactive to the violence. Instead of pushing against the actors of violence, they were choosing to protect themselves from them.

Some cities demonstrates both proactive and reactive resilience an example is the city of Medellin in Colombia. Its hillside informal settlements have become famous for inventive interventions, such as the cable car connecting the hillside communities with the subway system.

These efforts were undertaken to integrate a city that was divided along lines of violence; yet they were also reactions to a long history of violence arising from the slums.

What is more interesting are the proactive efforts that community organizations have made to confront the everyday insecurity in their neighborhoods, such as human rights forums and support groups led by former actors in the armed conflict who know best how to extricate current members from the cycle of violence. In this respect, community solidarity becomes vital in addressing crimes and violence in the city.

Having a unifying goal, vision, or hope greatly increases the horizontal ties that exist within a community, and networks of people are essential to creating proactive resilience with significant scope, scale and longevity. Moreover, the examples of Medellin and Mexico City also indicate that vertical connections between communities and the state significantly impact resilience, which means that the absence of such a relationship confuses a community’s attempts to be resilient in the face of insecurity.

It could be concluded that, a history of prior success also appears to strengthen both proactive and reactive resilience, although in different ways. In the case of Mexico, initial progress by local governing officials who reacted against violence by fighting back against organized mafias in downtown Mexico City gave citizens hope that if they were to proactively take on a similar battle, there might be progress and there might be loyal support from the government. In the case of Medellin, in contrast, the prior history of state successes in demobilizing paramilitaries, organized criminal groups, and other agents of violence was a form of reactive resilience that led to the reduction of violence.

However, as time passed and new criminal groups pushed into the void, citizens began to see violence emerging once again. Faced with the knowledge that the root sources of violence were much more difficult to eliminate, citizens learned that it was important to organize proactively

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20 and on their own, in order to fight against the perpetrators of violence. And it was this learning process, built on the knowledge that both states and violent actors may come and go despite the best of intentions, that ultimately motivated citizens to rely on each other and to seek to control their own community responses to violence.

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3. Enabling Factors For Resilience Building And Their Challenges.

It is obvious that resilience materializes at the interface of citizen and state action, and is strengthened through relations of cooperation between and within communities and governing authorities. When citizens, the private sector, and governing authorities establish institutional networks of accountability that tie them together at the level of the community, there is much greater capacity for repulse against the perpetrators of violence, and thus greater likelihood of establishing normalcy in everyday life. When citizens and the state work together, we are more likely to see a productive mix of professional expertise, citizen oversight, and local knowledge in the establishment and monitoring of everyday security.

It is also important to note that the security activities produced through citizen-state networks of cooperation are most accountable, legitimate, and durable when they are headed and monitored by communities themselves.. At present, much of the work on the state’s role in confronting urban violence assumes that the state is and should be leading the strategies for violence reduction. But even in the best of circumstances, the state’s role in leading the fight against violence can generate citizen distrust, mainly in those environments where the state or police have a long history of corruption or impunity.

As such, supporting the community’s own autonomous actions by building on security adaptations already underway will help legitimize the cooperative relations between citizens and the state to help strengthen resilience in the long run.( Sanyal 1994).

However, in situations of chronic violence, power exerted by armed actors is often matched by a repressive hardline approach to security by the police or military. In such an environment, it can be difficult for citizens to find maneuvering room without alienating these coercive forces.

The adaptive response is all too frequently a negative one, in which citizens either accommodate the forces of violence or react defensively.

The challenge is to find an entry points of action that can initiate or sustain relationships of cooperative autonomy between citizens and the state. Architects and urban planners who work in violent cities would agree that the nature of violence is often tied to the nature of urban

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22 planning, and that by changing the nature of urban planning, one can change or reduce violence.

Cities with spaces that are violent and poorly built can begin by making infrastructure adjustments in informal areas in ways that can reduce incidents of violence caused by non - state armed actors. Consequently in order to build good resilience the community needs, a good city or urban planning, good governance and effective security sector reforms.

3.1 Static and Dynamic Resources of the Community

The static resources of a community are critical, but a dynamic notion of the adaptive, transformable nature of these capacities inheres in the concept . That is, CR requires a set of resources but also requires creative and imaginative deployment of those resources in the face of new and changing challenges. In a nutshell, CR is a process, not a condition ( Franken Berger et al. 2013). This further entails that CR, requires economic development, social capital, information and communication and the competence of the community. This is what I referred to as the static and dynamic resources of the community.

This category was also advocated by Chandra et al and Norris et al in their discussion of community resilience more specifically within the context of health security. They referred to it as the physical condition of the community prior to an event, as well as the capability to marshal resources in response to an adverse event. Physical and psychological health, and socioeconomic equity and well-being are a community’s baseline public health condition and its underlying education, employment, income, and inequality shape its available material resources for an adverse event.

Meanwhile, effective risk communication, integration of organizations, both governmental and nongovernmental, social connectedness, the ability to convey information rapidly and reliably, coordinate the work of public and private organizations at multiple levels, reliance on networks of personal and professional relationships enhance the ability of a community to respond to, adapt, and recover from adversities.

At this point the definition emanating from USAID (Franken Berger et al. in 2013), would be relevant. According to them, the distinctive aspect of CR is the capacity for collective action.

Further, they also emphasize that social capital is essential to collective action, and that the

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23 extent to which communities can effectively combine social capital and collective action in response to shocks and stresses, and identify a set of community assets as vital in the definition of CR.

Understanding social capital could imply the degree and diversity of connections among individuals in a community, including “strong perceptions of local involvement, self-regulating moral codes, and the norms, reciprocity, and trust that exist between individuals and groups”.

As noted previously, social capital is a collection of behaviors and attitudes that can be difficult to measure. Assisting social capital, ancillary community assets include other types of capital, including human, financial, natural, physical, and political.

Human capital refers to the community’s aggregate level of health, work, and skills, which might come from local patterns in public health and education. Financial capital refers to “patterns and trends in formal employment, entitlements, remittances, and external financial assistance . Natural capital identifies a community’s access to natural resources, and physical capital identifies a community’s infrastructure. Finally, political capital refers to the nature of power relationships in the community, including access to power and influence. Potential measures include institutional effectiveness or performance, voter participation, minorities in positions of leadership, transparency and accountability.

Accordingly, community capacity to reduce crime is shaped by macro-social and macroeconomic factors like resource deprivation, residential instability, heterogeneity, family disruption, and urbanization, but these structural factors are also mediated by informal social features of communities, including the ability to supervise teenage groups, the size and density of friendship networks, and participation or engagement in civic life, (Sampson and Groves). The themes of community context, social cohesion, or collective efficacy that run throughout Sampson’s work resonate with the political science literature on social capital.

Putnam (1995) noted the apparently positive influence of social capital, understood as features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit, which is remarkably similar to Sampson’s definition of

“collective efficacy.” Putnam thus understands social capital as a bundle of individual or community properties: social connectedness, neighborliness, and public trust or confidence.

Disaggregating further, social connectedness can be public and private.

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24 Public connectedness refers to participation in public institutions or associations, including elections which resonates with Franken Berger et al.’s discussion of possible measures of political capital. Indeed, voting tends to correlate with measures of associational activity, and dimensions of social capital are also correlated with each other among individuals.

Similarly, components of collective efficacy such as informal social control and social cohesion tend to move together (Sampson et al 1997,). In the case of Sampson et al., the correlations between social control and social cohesion and trust motivated the authors to merge the two measures into one, which they then labeled collective efficacy.

Again, Sampson et al. emphasize that collective efficacy does not exist in a vacuum; rather, it is embedded in structural contexts and a wider political economy that classifies places of residence by key social characteristics. Following this point of view, as well as other researchers on the structural covariates of violence, (Land et al. 1990; Baller et al. 2001; Deane et al. 2008), broad demographic pressures like population change, shifts in the age structure of the population, and residential mobility can create “institutional disruption and weakened social controls over collective life,” primarily because the formation of social ties and other forms of social capital takes time. Further, racial segregation and resource deprivation, and especially concentrated socioeconomic disadvantage, the combination of extreme poverty, unemployment or low occupational status, low education, can inflict havoc on social control, cohesion, and trust.

Also, Sampson et al. note that existing research has “demonstrated, at the individual level, the direct role of Socioeconomic Status (SES) in promoting a sense of control, efficacy, and even biological health itself , may work at the community level. Indeed, a community’s structural features may undermine any social assets it may have in terms of collective efficacy: “resource deprivation act as a central force that undermines collective efficacy. Even if personal ties are strong in areas of concentrated disadvantage, they may be weakly bound to collective action.

The meaning of community resilience in the context of a persistent crisis of crime and violence now seems to come into clearer focus.

Drawing on the disaster preparedness literature, Sampson’s work on community context and collective efficacy, as well as broader interdisciplinary work on social capital, a definition of community resilience that is relevant and measureable in the context of studying crime and violence consists of two major dimensions: a structural one and a social one.

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25 At the structural level, population pressures, resource deprivation and family disruption are recognized as the primary predictors of violence (Land et al.), and along with inequality, age structure, and education establish the socioeconomic foundations of the social dimension and violence.

At the social level, informal social control, cohesion, and trust are shaped by the structural dimension which in turn also shape the incidence of crime and violence in a community;

conceptualizing the relationship between the structural and social dimensions of CR, and their causal relationship with crime and violence. A community with limited social cohesion is probable to be less resilience than that where there is a strong relationship among the members of the community. Social ties become primordial as each neighbor is concerned with the wellbeing of the other.

Economic Growth and stability allow communities to dedicate resources to mitigate and recover from adverse circumstances. Further, marginal and peripheral communities may be at the greatest risk of an adverse event, and are also the least likely to mobilize support after a disruption. Disparity leads to division in a community, and therefore the importance of equality for building resilience.

Social Capital can be conceived as a cluster of network, supportive relationships, paired with a

“sense of community, place attachment, and citizen participation. Thus, social capital encompasses material and nonmaterial resources, i.e., actual personal ties and involvement with other individuals, groups, and organizations, as well as a cultural and ideational sense of civic duty and loyalty to the community.

Social capital represents an important theoretical model for understanding CR as it focuses on group or community level attributes and considers the key social ties and networks that enable communities to respond to change or adversity whilst retaining core functions (Paton &

Johnston, 2001). For example, local ties, or bonding capital are important as they generate familiarity, perceptions of cohesion and coordination, support and care. However, without extra- local ties and networks, or bridging capital, a community runs the risk of local network burnout.

CR therefore depends on both the resources themselves and the dynamic attributes of those resources (Norris et al., 2008). A related and often cited theoretical framework used to explain CR is the economic capital model (Sherrieb, Norris & Galea, 2009. ).

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26 CR is dependent not only on the volume of economic resources present in the community but also on the diversity of those resources. Economic diversity implies balanced employment across industry classes and flexibility, and subsequently, stability of supply chains in the face of adversity and trauma. Moreover, in theory, resilient communities have the capacity to distribute resources equitably based on need rather than individual characteristics (e.g. race, social class).

Economic capital, as it is understood is not merely the presence of the resources, but rather centers on the ability of the community to mobilize and utilize those resources.

The degree to which a community possesses this ability is what differentiates a resilient community from its less responsive counterpart. In this model of resilience it is social capital that enables economic resources to be effectively employed (Breton, 2001, 9. P. 21-36). However, communities with relatively low levels of available resources can still be resilient. Provided diversity and flexibility characterize available resources and access is equitable across all strata of the community, the volume of resources is less important (to a certain threshold level). For example, Mitchell and colleagues (2008) found that resilient communities with low economic capital, had housing policies in place that helped maintain the physical and social fabric of the local area. Thus, CR is dependent on the effective use of economic resources to return to equilibrium following shock or adversity rather than the overall economic standing of a given area.

This normative, cultural-ideational dimension of social capital helps understand how scholars and policymakers might think more systematically about promoting the culture of lawfulness advocated as part of CR.

Information and communication are key adaptive capacities. Having accurate and timely information about the adverse situation, is crucial, and having a communication system that allows for efficient understandings of the challenge and the appropriate response is also vital.

Given that the reliability of information is also required, public trust in the source of information is an important factor of community resilience . If the government is the information source or otherwise a key actor, trust in the government is essential ( Plough et al), noting that this trust is absent in many poorer and developing countries.

Definitely, if trust in government is absent, the legitimacy of authority may suffer, leading citizens to withdraw support from state institutions, and resort to self-help activities that might counteract the broader goals of CR.

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27 This trust is part of a larger public confidence regarded by other scholars as central to social capital (e.g., Putnam), and is also related to understanding culture of lawfulness. A key aspect of communication is the creation of conceptual frames and narratives, that can be either beneficial or corrosive. These frames might be created by the government or by media, or may emerge more organically from within communities, an example is the “Boston Strong” in the aftermath of the Boston(USA) marathon bombings. Community competence involves a sense of agency, ability, empowerment, and a real capacity to effect change.

These are dynamic qualities that are harder to measure, but proxies can offer good measures. For instance, if the ability to process and assess information, think critically, evaluate options, and solve a new emerging problem makes a community competent, then a logical relationship exists between education and community competence. Also, horizontal rather than vertical patterns of authority might facilitate creativity and cooperation, (Norris et al.).

All being equal, educational levels and economic resources should be positively related with community competence, and disparity should be negatively correlated with it.

Municipal or Community Resilience in itself has taken many forms in the recent years. It could be defined as the capacity to anticipate risk, limit impact and bounce back rapidly through survival, adaptability, evolution and growth in the face of a turbulent change; the capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from multi-hazard threats with minimum damage to public health and safety, economy and security. Municipal resilience requires a set of resources but also requires creative and imaginative deployment of those resources in the face of new or changing adversities. In short, it is a continuous and dynamic process. ( Franken Berger et al. 2013). Urban areas are now homes to half of the world’s population and are expected to absorb almost all new population growth over the next 25 years (UN-HABITAT 2007).

The urbanization trend has been especially impressive in some regions, particularly Africa and Asia. Some cities, are struggling with high levels of violence that undermine the very foundations of the economic and social development of the entire population. In some cases, areas of the city have deteriorated into “no-go zones” that undermine the overall governance of the area and trap the poorest population in a dangerous cycle of poverty and violence.

Community resilience, then, entails the ongoing and developing capacity of the community to

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28 account for its vulnerabilities and develop capabilities that benefit that community (Chandra et al. 2011:9).

Chronic violence alters social networks and relationships and this may lead to lack of trust and effective collective action. The climate of fear and distrust as a result of threat or violence, can become so deep-rooted that it engenders additional violence, which then is justified as defense model (Simpson 1993). Violence, or the fear of it, deters investment, stigmatizes neighborhoods, erodes social cohesion, and limits access to employment and educational opportunities.

On the individual level, urban residents in crime and violence hot spots may decrease or refrain from investing in their own human capital, and stop practicing some forms of solidarity with neighbors for fear that these actions would put them at greater risk of victimization. Concern over these experiences has made urban violence a central preoccupation of policymakers, planners, and development practitioners (Jütersonke and others 2009; UN-HABITAT 2007).

3.2 Effective Urban Planning

This involves putting on strategic infrastructures and the creation of vibrant social and economic activities that brings together different actors and institutions in the oversight and management of an urban space and at the same time rejecting conventional approaches that isolate the peripheries. Inhabitants in areas of the city without vibrant economic activities bringing together multiple classes of consumers, and without a mix of residential and commercial activities are less likely to join together in strong relationships with each other and the state in the fight against violence. Good urban planning to achieve such aims can reinforce the ways and context in which multiple actors become socially and spatially committed to each other.

Promoting and investing in mixed commercial and residential land use, particularly in high risk areas, building infrastructure that enables free movement of people within and between all neighborhoods, and prioritizing strategic urban investments that will help establish government- community reciprocities is of great importance.

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29 This also implies rejecting conventional approaches which usually privileged growing cities to the disadvantage of the peripheries. Citizens of all income groups need to have the opportunity to live in vibrant areas where social, economic, and residential activities and priorities reinforce each other in ways that bring a community together.

In situations of chronic violence, one can think of urban planning or design interventions built on daily interaction in space that maximize networks of shared knowledge and acquaintance to increase the opportunities for residents to physically connect to each other and share information about violence and how to minimize it. A focus on the formal-informal divide in planning practice, with an eye to integrating new and old neighborhoods of various income levels through a more integrative and equitable distribution of services, investments, and opportunities for interaction in urban spaces should be considered. Also important is the acceptance of a wide range of community urban projects and priorities generated from networks of inhabitants in situations of violence.

By soliciting knowledge from those living in neighborhoods where violence has regularly brought stigmatization and estrangement, designers offer a form of recognition to citizens whose views of what makes a livable neighborhood have not been accommodated in more formal planning for the modern city.(Grams 2010). Taking into consideration their local knowledge will not only strengthen relations of cooperative autonomy between citizens and the state, but will also give planners action-ready allies in their quest to find new projects that make some progress in the fight against violence.

Maybe another successful way is through community development programs or local actions that strengthen or demand feedback : everyday struggles against violent actors at a neighborhood level, for example, could be identified as supplementing broader public policies designed by the municipal government. More open recognition of the initiatives and contributions made locally will help embed public policies within the discourses and identities of a community, thus strengthening the legitimacy of the state and making its public policies more sustainable while aligning state and community actions and objectives. When the state works responsively and interactively with localities, government planners have new opportunities to learn from such initiatives.

It is important to recognize that enabling resilience at the community level has it limits. While the community initiative is necessary, it cannot achieve the necessary scales of process and

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30 change without simultaneous and collaborative action by the state, whose organization, resources, and technical expertise provide the needed capacity to implement, manage and sustain legitimate laws and security policies.

What is needed therefore, should be a dual approach that consists of the construction of community autonomy, making the local the primary sphere of security intervention, followed by mobilization of state expertise and resources to put power behind policies that respect and build upon autonomy. In situations of chronic violence it is easy for citizens to become less connected to both the local and the national state because the rule of law does not seem to be working for them especially when perpetrators are the principal source of employment.

When these are allowed to fragment the urban space, violence is likely and the search for order is prioritized and it becomes tempting for the state to revert to modernist techniques of social and spatial control that may have fueled violence and conflict in the first place. In such a case, new forms of planning connecting the central and the periphery, creating new social and special synergies between the franchised and the disenfranchised could be a better strategy. But financial crisis, coupled with socio-economic disparity, complex and informal neighborhood render the implementation of the above initiatives very difficult.

3.3 Effective and Efficient Security Networks.

This is the capacity of the state at the national and especially at the municipal level, to create an efficient crime fighting apparatus with the local authorities, through a fair and just judiciary, depoliticized and accessible to the people, encompassing the principle of legitimate security and community autonomy.

For the state to play the role of partner in confronting violence without altering or dominating a community’s own security agenda is perhaps the major challenge encountered in the effort to nurture cooperative autonomy in the service of urban resilience. Most current dominant structures in cities with chronic violence are not set up to let a community independently guide, rather than react to urban policymaking, particularly when it comes to security measures, which

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31 usually require a degree of policing equipment, legal knowledge, and professional expertise that are not always available to citizens.(Joshi 2010) The absence of such institutions lead to the flow of violence. Yet for obvious reasons, even in democratic contexts government officials who are confronted with chronic violence are particularly cautious of giving localities free sovereignty to arrest, persecute, or battle local criminals.

A comprehensive and contextually appropriate approach to law enforcement facilitates the reduction and prevention of crime in a city. By instituting a transparent justice system based on ethical principles, cities can uphold the rule of law and promote citizenship in daily life. These norms are critical to maintaining order during times of stress. Well planned and resourced law enforcement facilitates peaceful recovery, and ensures a healthy population by reducing crime- related injury, fatality and stress. An integrated approach to law enforcement combines deterrents with effective policing, emergency capacity, a transparent judicial system, and measures to reduce corruption.

An effective judicial system promotes civic education as a preventive measure, as well as responsive action through fair justice. Sufficiently resourced policing practices that promote safety and security are a feature of daily life in a resilient city, and continue during times of disorder. Trust and transparency are identified as key attributes of policing, which can be achieved by reducing corruption and by involving other relevant actors in law enforcement, such as community leaders.

Trust in city authorities and legal institutions is achieved by appropriate enforcement of laws and avoiding discrimination and violence in law enforcement. Laws are upheld by resourceful and responsive systems of policing, which actively involve city agencies, businesses and civil society. (Davis 2006). Social stability and security is also facilitated by inclusive public space design, which helps to avoid creating places where crime may proliferate, while maximizing the safety and security of individuals. Specific sub-indicators that underpin this indicator area include: Deterrents to crime; Corruption reduction; Policing and justice; Approach to law enforcement.

Because of the contested or otherwise ambiguous historical relationship between municipalities and the state in cities where violence is high, localities often insist that if local officials are to be involved in community security activities, their engagement must be framed within the context of the community ,s preferences.

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32 Such a trade-off is very difficult to manage when it comes to policing, particularly when police themselves are seen as coercive forces whose role in the fight against crime is itself a source of controversy. One way to accomplish this is to bring police into the community as social partners, not merely as coercive actors.

Many forms of community policing try to achieve these goals, although most fail to convince citizens that police are truly cooperative partners. This is particularly the case when communities see themselves in opposition to the current government, or in the context of chronic violence where state legitimacy and political authority, themselves, are seen as the main sources of violence. It is for these reasons, including the adoption of better urban planning principles, concerted policy attention must be paid to innovating new security practices based on the principles of cooperative autonomy. (Cilak and Pearce, 2009)

Indeed, a community with strong bridging and bonding capital might have considerable social power to effectively push back against the perpetrators of violence. But without some state involvement or police cooperation to keep such efforts within the bounds of the law, these same autonomous community capacities could readily sustain other extra-judicial actions that constitute forms of negative resilience.

Likewise, in situations of chronic violence where the police or the state are involved in organized crime or are themselves perpetrators of violence, they are reluctant to cooperate with citizens in fight against crime, thus perpetuating its existence. Strong community capacity is not going to make much headway in reducing violence if the state is part of the problem.(Postigo 2011).

Accordingly, in order to avoid either equilibrium or negative adaptations to violence, urban policymakers must be able develop new security programs that mandate police and community cooperation, with the nature and direction of efforts set by the community itself.

Legitimate security allows for and supports citizen and community autonomy from violent coercion and the co-optation of interests by both state and non-state actors. While the centerpiece of any effective security arrangement should be the prevention of violence and coercion and the guarantee of safety, legitimate security networks or arrangements can be formulated in a way that actively supports and engenders resilience, defined earlier as “individual and communities’

capacities to resist against the perpetrators of violence by generating relatively autonomous control over the activities, spaces, social or economic forces, and conditions that comprise their daily lives.”

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33 Such an aim would include an array of social objectives that might either link security directly to violence reduction or , would help strengthen the horizontal and vertical relations within and between communities and the state, thus linking legitimate security to community autonomy and consequently to resilience. ( Iveson . K. 2007 ). However, vigilantism and its dynamics, followed by poor vertical connectivity between the community and the state, the problem of inter- operability between the armed actors, corruption and lack of confidence on the police force, and an unfair judicial system render more difficult reforms in the security sector.

3.4 Collective Identity and Communication Network

Communities that are active, appropriately supported by the city government and well-connected with one another contribute to the bottom-up creation of a city with a strong identity and culture.

This enables individuals, communities and the city government to trust and support each other, and face unforeseen circumstances together without civil violence. Creating cohesive cities has both social and physical dimensions. Reinforcing local identity and culture contributes to positive relationships between individuals while reinforcing their collective ability to improve the environment where they live, work, create and play. (Onyx & Bullen, 2000: 24).

These relationships are supported by a number of practices, including social networks and community organizations, artistic expression and the preservation of cultural legacy, including religion, language and traditions. Ideally, these practices are underpinned by spatial interventions that shape the places where communities develop and connect. Provision of communal facilities, public spaces and physical accessibility can help to strengthen community solidarity and avoid isolation. An inclusive society is promoted by community participation. For example: processes that encourage civic engagement in planning and decision-making processes.

Social practices are reinforced by physical interventions that nurture resourcefulness and integration, such as the provision of communal meeting places; and the development of mixed neighborhoods that offer a range of housing opportunities to different social and income groups.

Specific sub-indicators that underpin this indicator area include: Community and civic